Art Of The Day Weekly
#321 - from 7 November 2013 to 13 November 2013
Guerrilla Girls, No Title, 1985-1990. Courtesy Tate Liverpool.
IN THE AIR
Is art to the left?
LIVERPOOL – That is the question which– somehow - the Tate asks in this predominantly workers’ town. It does it by studying how the traditional values of the left influenced Western art since the end of the 19th century. The demonstration can only be done with concrete examples and they have been rather well chosen. The Death of Marat is the first icon brought forward: if it has become so famous it is because its author, David, accepted that there be no limit to its reproductions. Equality, fraternity, disappearance of the individual in face of the community: these values can be found in the posters of the Atelier populaire in May 1968 as with the Guerrilla Girls and their activism against the sexism in the collections of major museums. From El Lissitzky to Bertolt Brecht, from the Situationist International to the Taller de Gráfica Popular, the selection is very international and eclectic.
• Art Turning Left : How Values Changed Making, 1792-2012 at the Tate Liverpool, from 8 November 2013 to 2 February 2014
EXHIBITIONS
Ludwig Meidner, Burned-Out (Homeless), 1912. Oil on canvas © Museum Folkwang
1914, a black year
BONN - The Centre Pompidou Metz had treated us to a fascinating exhibition on the year 1917. While the centennial of another fateful date approaches, this new retrospective studies the position of the avant-gardes regarding the breakout of the world conflict in 1914. The friendly links between artists across the border are shattered by the war rhetoric of governments. While some manage to more or less adapt to the new situation (Malevitch drew patriotic posters and Dunoyer de Segonzac specialized in camouflage techniques), most artists suffered deep traumatism. Duchamp exiled himself in the USA, the Delaunay fled to Spain, while Boccioni, Macke, Frans Marc and Gaudier-Brzeska went to the front and never came back … Yet, it was in the midst of the war, right in 1916 in Zurich that the Cabaret Voltaire, the ancestor of Dada, came to be. It showed the artists’ capacity to reinvent themselves and to question the absurdity of bellicose rhetoric.
• The Avant-gardes at war at the Bundeskunsthalle, from 8 November 2013 to 23 February 2014.
AUCTIONS
Lot 31. Miniature square on ivory: Portrait of a colonel of the cavalry in a green uniform; mahogany frame; 72 x 72 mm. Period of the First Restoration. Estimate: €500–600.
Napoleonic passions
PARIS – On 6 November, the lot including the first and second codicils of Napoleon’s will, in whcih he requested on 16 April 1821 that his ashes be brought back to France, will undoubtedly go for a good price (at Artemisia). On 7 and 8 November, lovers of Napoleonic history will have an avalanche of weapons to choose from. The sale aligns weapons mostly from the manufactures of Versailles, directed by the very competent Nicolas-Noël Boutet, and from Klingenthal, in Alsace, a specialist in blades. The sale includes flintlock pistols by Le Page (1812), mourning swords and even a child’s sabre that belonged to marshal Soult’s son. The historical memorabilia put up for auction are not all bellicose: there are miniatures of officers belonging to the hussars to Hoffman’s watercolor prints, including cachets, coffers and shoulder ornaments– lots at low prices for fetishists…
• Armes anciennes et souvenirs historiques at hôtel Drouot on 7 and 8 November 2013 (SVV de Maigret)
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Denis Rouvre, Jean-Marie Nemba. Pigment print, 108x108 cm. Courtesy galerie Hélène Bailly, Paris.
Denis Rouvre, Kanaky 2013
The musée du quai Branly is currently showing the patrimonial dimension of Kanak art from New Caledonia. For a perfect balance photographer Denis Rouvre (born in 1967) presents the current face of the Kanak populations, the result of the many weeks he stayed there, at the Centre culturel Tjibaou in Nouméa and sharing the daily lives of the tribes. The photos, developed in a chamber, are portraits that détail each haïr, each wrinkle, each pore of the skin of the models who look at the camera lens without much fuss, naturally – a sincerity that alone makes them surprising in comparison to our attitude of generalized poses in our showbiz society. Farmers and fishermen, young and old, men and women who exemplify a community with a traditional way of life that will have trouble resisting the development of tourism and industrialisation, in particular based on the exploitation of nickel.
• Denis Rouvre is exhibited at the galerie Hélène Bailly, from 7 to 23 November 2013.
OPENINGS OF THE WEEK
BOOKS
The end of taxidermy
Squirrels playing cards, a banquet of lobsters, Siamese lamb, a leopard’s skull turned into an ink well: these are but some of the applications of the art of taxidermy in the XIXth century. It’s a shame one has to put on glasses to decipher the tiny letters in this fascinating book. As it tells us the story of this particular art form, we learn as much about ourselves and our relationship to animals and death. A platypus of Raoul Ward’s in 1904, the extraordinary tropical birds under a bell in the Gardner home in London in 1880 or the family dogs stuffed by Hutchings of Aberystwyth must feel very lonely: taxidermists today are an endangered species. At the Muséum d’histoire naturelle in Paris, after Jack Thiney left in 2012, only two are left. Only hunters can assure the business for the few private practitioners left. Strangely enough, just when this century-old know-how is on the road to extinction, fashion, brands of erotic lingerie or contemporary artist such as Jan Fabre, Wim Delvoye, or Adel Abdessemed are rediscovering how fascinating an art it is …
• Taxidermie by Alexis Turner, Gallimard, 2013, 256 p., €35 (translation from the English, original title Taxidermy Thames & Hudson).
IN BRIEF
MUNICH – The German magazine Focus reveals the discovery of a collection of 1500 works by major European masters who had been classified as degenerate. It was believed these works had been destroyed. But they were all in the apartment of art historian Cornelius Gurlitt.
PARIS – The Salon international du patrimoine culturel (International heritage fair) is being held from 7 to 10 November 2013 at the Carrousel du Louvre.
PARIS – Paris Tableau, the international fair of ancient paintings, will be held from 13 to 17 November 2013 at the Palais de la Bourse.
PARIS – The 3rd festival Photo Saint-Germain-des-Prés is being held from 6 to 23 November 2013, on the theme “Visages et corps” (Faces and body).
TURIN - The contemporary art fair Artissima is being held at Lingotto Fiere from 8 to 10 November 2013.